An excursion into certain areas of art, computers, philosophy, text, zombies, alchemy, metallurgy, music, food, creativity, pataphysics, politics, France where I worked as a cultural civil servant (yes, I do know that this is appalling), Berlin where I live and work for me, England where I come from, and so on... this may change.

Friday, December 02, 2011

Wednesday, September 21, 2011

OK, so this video is a bit naffly made, but still.....And if it makes you smile, cry, or smile and cry, then here's where you can pay for a kid to get the operation. In some countries, this will literally save his or her life. They accept any amount. Go on, don't just think that you will, feel better about yourself, then forget it…Thanks.

Monday, September 05, 2011

Government figures show that approximately 2 million British visitors come to Germany each year. Of these, approximately 500 die whilst in Germany. This means there is a 1 in 4000 chance of a British visitor dying in Germany.

Easyjet has 2 daily flights per day to Berlin from Luton Airport, 3 from Gatwick and 1 each from Bristol, Glasgow, Liverpool, Manchester. Assuming that each flight carries about 120 people (a very conservative estimate) and that half of these are British, that means 9 x 60 = 540 Brits come to Berlin each day. Or about 200 000 per year.

So 50 Easyjet passengers per year who come to Berlin from Britain will die in Germany. That’s one passenger per week. This would be terrifying were one not a Zombie.

Friday, February 04, 2011

Since I'm introducing a series of conferences on 'Pataphysics, I thought…

For Walter Benjamin, history contains within itself a critique of 'progress', against the idea of continuity. This leads to history as a series of 'interferences' that we must construct or actualise in the present. But the idea of discontinuity, of interruption (we might say inter-rupture) is necessary only if we see through 'normal' eyes. The rainbow ends, not magically with a pot of gold, but sideways, across the bandwidth, beyond red and violet. It appears to have bounds, and in our perception, it does.

But with other eyes, those of the 'Pataphysician, we can decide to see the magenta of the spectrum, to fold (or unfold, in the this case topologically equivalent) the rainbow, then to join the red and blue 'edges' to obtain magenta, which is otherwise not to be found - see this.

The only continuity is catastrophe, and catastrophe theory shows that that the only way out of THAT is to become pluri-dimensional, like the ant on a sheet of paper that has a fold, allowing - perhaps forcing - the ant to make a dimensional 'jump', seen from its 2-dimensional point of view as a sudden, catastrophic relocation - let us say 'dislocation' - in 2-d space.

'Pataphysics PLAYS with paper-folding, with ants, with jumping and with Walter Benjamin.

And since these conferences are in an art context: what is the job of the artist? To heal the dislocations, which is reform? Or to celebrate and underline the discontinuum, which is revolutionary? Of course, both.And 'Pataphysics is the discipline which transcends, and treats as 'normal', these apparent contradictions. Between black and white, there is always… red.Between, beyond, and above 'true' and 'false', on a meta-level, there is 'Pataphysics.